


Ideation

by masswisteria



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety Disorder, Gen, PTSD, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-27
Updated: 2013-05-27
Packaged: 2017-12-13 02:58:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/819175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/masswisteria/pseuds/masswisteria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Battle of New York, Tony is haunted by memories and nightmares.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ideation

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by characterization and events from Iron Man 3, but not really in a spoilery way.

Somewhere between vomiting up the evening’s bourbon and the afternoon’s whiskey Tony finally achieved a level of consciousness that could reasonably be called “awake.” By some miracle he had made it to the toilet in time for the main event, despite his sleep addled state. He spat into the bowl, once, twice, trying to clear the taste of bile from his mouth. Cautiously, gradually, Tony rose to his feet, maintaining his grip on the cool porcelain until he was sure his knees would support him.

Tony fumbled in the dark until he found the doorknob, and quietly shut the bathroom door before flipping on the light switch. There was no need to disturb Pepper anymore than he might already have. He squinted against the sudden brightness, but he could see enough to notice the stranger staring back at him. It took Tony several confused seconds to recognize that the figure with the drawn, haggard face with too-wide eyes accentuated by dark rings was his own reflection. Tony let out a breath he had not realized he had been holding and turned on the faucet to wash the sweat and spit from his face. Bit by bit, the fog of his half-asleep state lifted.

Awareness led to memory, and memory slammed home hard. Tony’s breathing stopped abruptly, then came back at double, triple the pace. Short, sharp, ragged breaths. His stomach lurched, but there was nothing left for it to expunge. Tony’s knees buckled and he would have collapsed on the hard tile floor if not for his desperate death grip on the edge of the vanity. The overhead lights seemed far too bright, and he squeezed his eyes shut against them once more, and against the growing throbbing inside his skull. All thought slipped away save one: this was not happening, this could not be happening, not to him, not again not again not again -

Even that thought was interrupted when his face hit the frigid water, mid-breath. Tony yanked his head back out of the sink, and slammed it straight into the bottom of the faucet. Half blind by the water and with stars dancing around in what vision he had, he stumbled backwards simultaneously gasping for air and coughing up water. And yet he still managed to get out a creatively colorful curse or two. His back hit the hard oak of the bathroom door, rattling it against the doorjamb. Tony half sat, half collapsed to the floor and let his head fall back to rest against the door. Well, at least that...freak out, whatever the hell it was, was over.

Rivulets of ice cold water ran down from Tony’s hair, following the contours of his face to drip off his chin and fall into the growing puddle on the floor. He wiped the remaining water from his eyes and forced them open again, then let his hands drop into his lap. They still carried a slight tremor, and he felt like he had just run a marathon, but at least his breathing had returned to normal. Well, it was more calm than it had been, at least. No longer hyperventilating, anyway. And more importantly, the memory - that terrible scene that precipitated this little episode - remained. Tony could work with that, now that he could analyze it and treat it as a problem to be solved rather than some indescribable, existential horror. Fatigue and limited dexterity were internal things, things he could ignore. There was design work to be done before the physical labor. His immediate physical weakness would not be a problem.

The problem was external. It was danger, both realized and potential. It was villains and monsters and things yet unknown. But tonight, specifically, the problem was aircraft, and high energy impacts that lead to rapid depressurization and catastrophic loss of structural integrity, and Pepper Potts falling to her death.

The nightmare had begun the way it always did, with Tony racing to stop some spineless, shortsighted bureaucrats from turning Manhattan into a 150 kiloton funeral pyre. He caught the missile this time - sometimes he does not - and was able to point in the right direction - sometimes he could not. Tony assumed it was going to be one of those dreams then, where he is slowly vaporized by the nuclear blast, a single instant of pain and regret drawn out to an unquantifiable eternity. Or he floats alone endlessly through the depths of space, gradually freezing to death. Except that something was different in this one. Instead of riding the missile through the wormhole to God only knew where, Tony watched helplessly as an errant Chitauri energy blast flew out of Midtown, over the East River, and ripped into the fuselage of an inbound aircraft. Not a fighter jet, or a gunship, no, a simple white business jet bearing the Stark Industries logo. It did not make any sense. What was the pilot thinking, flying into a war zone? He had to know what was happening down there. But that sort of logic only ever mattered in Tony’s dreams, and this was decidedly a nightmare. The blast tore through the carbon fiber and aluminum hull like it was paper and the plane broke apart, its passengers and cargo pouring out like blood from an open wound. Tony did not need to look to know who was on that plane, but of course he did anyway. Half a dozen bodies falling through the air, and every one of them bore her face.

Way seventy three that Pepper Potts could die. At least he could prevent this one, now that he could think straight. The emergency suits would have to self-activate, and be able to lock onto an arbitrary body, not just ones they had been primed for...and they would have to coordinate with each other... Requirements and specifications shot rapid fire through Tony’s mind and he hardly noticed the trek through the still dark bedroom and down to his lab. By the time he reached his workbench and brought up his displays, his hands were hardly shaking at all.


End file.
